Lost City of S

About the game

An explorer in a pith helmet sets out to find the lost city of S, where, legend has it, superstition itself was invented. The story, told in a few lines at the top of the screen, adds one warning: to this day, a mishap happens in that place every thirteen seconds.

Lost City of S is a quick running game seen from above at an angle. Your explorer crosses a thick jungle of palms and boulders, heading north, with the screen following him. The mishaps are what make it a game: the world keeps changing under your feet, and the trees, the colours and even the way your controls respond can turn on you. Big dark gorillas wait in the undergrowth, and the explorer, who is not very big, has a limited amount of health. He mutters about it as he goes, with lines like "Boys don't cry".

The treasure at the end is the lost idol of superstition, the one with the power to end all superstition, or so they say. Markus Fisch made it for js13kGames 2024, where the whole game, zipped, had to fit in 13 kilobytes. The theme that year was Triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number thirteen.

Playing it here

This is the build submitted to the competition, unchanged. Click Play and the intro text appears on its own. The game needs WebGL, which any recent browser has. Nothing is saved, and a run is short.

Controls

A few things worth knowing

Go north. The game tells you the direction at the start. When the controls turn strange, stop and test them before moving on.

Use the trees. The palms hide the gorillas until you are close, so leave yourself room to turn around.

Keep walking. The mishap clock does not stop while you stand still.

Credits and licence

Lost City of S was written and drawn by Markus Fisch for js13kGames 2024. He released it into the public domain under the Unlicense; the licence text is linked from this page, and the source code is on GitHub.